Collecting Momentos to Remember the Precious Moments

Our granddaughter stayed in the trailer with us for several days on the way to our son's wedding. Even though we have grown accustomed to the two-hour time difference since we've been in the Pacific time zone, Carter was definitely still on central time. She woke up at 5 a.m., and quickly pointed out that was 7 a.m. back home. So we got to see the sun rise over the pond in our campground, and played on the campground playground before anyone else was awake. She had started a trip treasures bag, so she was looking for a momento from each activity on our trip. We couldn't pick up any rocks in the national park, but she was holding a piece of a "volcano rock" she found this morning to remind her of all the volcanoes we saw yesterday at Lassen Volcanic National Park. What a great momento to remember our time amongst all those volcanoes and lava tubes!

With that early wake-up, we were on the road earlier than expected. It wasn't long before we had Mount Shasta in our windshield view as we headed north across California.

Our first destination was the middle falls of the McCloud River Loop. We were early enough to get a parking place for the pickup and trailer in this popular parking lot. We got our first view from the top shortly after we arrived.

Then we started the walk down through the forest to see it closer. Carter was great at helping Gram down the downhill trail. She was pretending to be the camp leader, while Mark was the teenage camp counselor, and Denisa was the seven-year-old camper. We even sang camp songs on the way to the waterfall.

While this is a popular swimming hole during hot summer days, we had it all to ourselves at 7:30 in the morning.

We had wandered into another of God's wonders!

The lighting was great at that hour, and this would be one of our favorite pictures of the trip--with Grandude and Carter in the sunlight on the rock looking at the Middle Falls.

Mark is a rock scrambler, and it looks like Carter has inherited his mountain goat genes.

We planned to swim at this popular spot . . .

so we tested the water with our toes.

But we found that our toes got numb quickly from this water that was a combination of the winter snow melt and a cold water spring. Nope, none of us were interested in jumping in and swimming under that waterfall.

So we headed back up the trail, looking for a momento of the waterfall trip. We found a pine cone that fit well into the treasure bag. It's a good thing that the camp leader could help our little camper up that hill!

Our next stop was the town of Mount Shasta, California. We went in search of a Shasta cola to drink with our picnic lunch. This was complicated by the fact that we had to find parking for the pickup and trailer at any grocery store where we shopped. But we parked with a view of Mount Shasta just down the street. It took two stops at two different grocery stores before we found our lunch drink.

Don't tell her parents, but we drank orange Shasta with our lunch of local barbecue in Mount Shasta, California. That's a nice momento to add to our trip.

It wasn't long before we crossed the state line into Oregon. The sign was hard to read with all the stickers that had been added to it. This was our seventh state of this trip. We also made a stop at the Oregon welcome center. We've been to many of these state centers along the highways as we entered new states. They are a great place to pick up some information and a new map. But we didn't know that if you visited with a cute seven-year-old you were given all kinds of momentos. We got free post cards, a bag of the state stone (sun rocks), stickers, a button, and a tourist bag, in addition to our map and guidebooks. Those sun rocks made a nice momento for Carter's treasure bag.

We set up the trailer in the Water Wheel RV Park and made dinner. The host at the park mentioned a nice kayaking spot, and that's where we headed for the evening.

We found that we weren't the only ones floating on the water this evening. We found a mother duck . . .

and her adolescent ducklings behind her.

We found that our new inflatable kayak was (barely) big enough for three passengers. Denisa got a bit of a break, as Carter took over some of the paddling in the front.

We floated right by a gaggle of geese on Spring Creek. This perfectly clear creek was just eight miles north of our campground, and was a cool way to spend our evening.

That clear water made it easy to look for another momento--like the colored rocks on the creek bed. Even though we tried over and over to bring up a special rock with our paddles, they always slipped off. The water was too cold to get in to retrieve a rock. So Grandude was the hero, getting his long arm wet finding Carter just the perfect red rock for her treasure bag.

We collected another day of momentos to help us remember the precious moments of our time together on this trip!